May 1-2, 1899.] 



science: 



675 



the shadow and, after many adventures, he 

 overtook the man to whom he had sold it. 

 But neither promises nor blows availed 

 auj-thing. The stranger turned a deaf ear 

 to the former, and the latter only served to 

 tear or bruise the shadow which the stranger 

 used in self-defence. When at last Schle- 

 mihl died it was observed he left no wraith 

 to rustle through the old graveyard at 

 Kunersdorf. According to Mr. Chamisso, 

 a friend of Schlemihl, who has recorded the 

 facts above noted, " An event had taken the 

 place of an action as has happened not in- 

 frequently in the world's history." That 

 he was unable to nullify this event was sup- 

 posed to be the cause of the failure of his 

 efforts at self-realization. But this ethereal 

 epigram does not explain why the loss of 

 his shadow made him physically uncomfort- 

 able. For the cause of this we must search 

 in the fluidic conditions by which he was 

 surrounded. 



Mr. Dean has, therefore, devoted special 

 attention to these details, to make clear 

 the nature of the shadow itself and of the 

 being who made way with it. 



Certain writers have too hastily assumed 

 that this being was the Devil. This is 

 obviously not the case, for this fabled crea- 

 tion, the ' Faded fancy of an elder world,' 

 ' the fluidic phantom of efiete orthodoxy,' 

 as Mr. Dean styled it, has no objective ex- 

 istence. The fact that the stranger was 

 dressed in black which seemed red by trans- 

 mitted light, and that he exhaled a faint 

 sulphurous aroma, would seem to bear out 

 this supposition. But these details were 

 more likely results of pure fancy, perhaps 

 heightened by the presence of a highly con- 

 centrated fluidic aura. 



The real nature of the being is shown 

 by the erudite researches of Dr. Adolph 

 D'Assier on the ' fauna of the shades,' as 

 set forth in his remarkable volume on 

 ' Posthumous Humanity.' The stranger 

 was, doubtless, a lycanthropic posthom, or 



shadow- devouring phantom, who, being un- 

 able to suck the blood of Schlemihl himself, 

 carried away his shadow to strengthen his 

 own fast waning identity. There are many 

 records, especially among the peasants of 

 Little Eussia, of phantoms who satisfy their 

 hunger in this uncanny way. The word 

 lycanthropic (wolf-manly) was drawn from 

 this common habit with the wehr-wolf, the 

 phantasmal double of the common gray 

 wolf. The same tendencies are found in 

 posthoms of wolf-like men to which the 

 generic term ' lycanthropic' is also applied. 

 It may be noted that now the wolf is prac- 

 tically extinct in the forests of Germany ; its 

 posthom, the wehr-wolf, no longer appears 

 and its familiar call of 'willi-wa-wu: wito-hu' 

 is no longer heard in the German shades. 



The name posthom Qjost — after ; homo 

 — man) was some years since offered by Mr. 

 Dean as a general designation for those 

 phantasmal doubles which D'Assier calls 

 by the awkward and inadequate name of 

 fluidic forms or fluidic phantoms. It was 

 at first supposed that these creations were 

 exclusively human and natural sequences 

 of physical death. The error of this opin- 

 ion is now made evident, but the conven- 

 ient name, as more definite than phantom 

 and more generic than wraith, may still be 

 retained with this broader definition. 



The origin of the posthom is thus ex- 

 plained by Mr. Dean : It is well known that 

 all animals and plants are built up of cells 

 or chambers, each cell containing the mag- 

 netic life jelly or protoplasm. It is also 

 well established that these cells are not 

 completely filled by this substance. More- 

 over, it is known that even protoplasm 

 itself is not a true liquid, but a mass of net- 

 work, like a skein of tangled yarn. In this 

 cell and its skein of protoplasm the minute 

 atoms of the odic forces of the universe 

 penetrate. In so doing, by their entangle- 

 ment and pei'meation, they built up within 

 the cells a form corresponding in all re- 



